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2011-08-29

Wonder-focal

Common Daisy

How many people would look closely at the humble daisy on the lawn?

It is not what you see, but what you focus on.

Had the whole flower been crystal clear in the above photo, the pollen clumps would not have stood out from the contrasting fuzziness of the petals. The dreamy quality of the shot would have been lost.

Sometimes, when we feel drained by life's trials or just inexplicably down, taking a moment to focus on something else positive really helps. And voila! There are wonders to behold in places you don't expect or have long forgotten to look.

The uneven focus of the daisy also reminds me somewhat of myself. I don't deny or embrace my imperfections. I just acknowledge them and try to improve where possible. It is every individual thing about me that together make me uniquely me. However, the desire to improve is also a quality in me that I value. To improve is to evolve. To evolve is to live.

Speaking of evolution, when I first saw this photo of a dandelion (below), I was fascinated by the presence of tiny bristles, the long petals' shape resembling empty pea pods, and the general uniform complexity. It turned out that a single flower head is actually a collection of tiny individual flowers (called ray florets). Each skinny petal visible to our eyes is actually 5 petals fused together. The visible cylindrical thingies with filament 'legs' are each 5 stamens (the male part of the flower that produces pollen) fused at the top part. And so on, and so forth. If you are interested in the biology of it, have a look at the Asteraceae wikipedia page. Here is a wonderful botanical drawing of a ray floret.

The dandelion is a rather complex thing, and we are way more complicated than that.